Stuff Every Agile Development Team Needs to Know: A Primer

So, you’re a development team member on a Scrum Team. We know that can sometimes be a little overwhelming. I've been in the business for more than a decade and yet the amount of change and dedication that top-notch software development requires is still daunting to me. With this in mind, my team and I have gone through our database of resources and pulled out what we think is the most relevant, useful information that you need to know to be effective in an Agile development team and to excel. There are lots to learn if you are new, but a book a month and a link a week is a good pace. Call us if we can help. Good luck on your Agile journey!

Stuff Every Agile Development Team Needs to Know: A Primer

Start Here

Whether you're looking at hardware, software or the people who make both of these work, if it's Agile you'll have a hard time finding a better, more comprehensive library of resources. We have lots of material, mostly in easy to consume pieces. Some of my favorites include:

• Kent Graziano on Petabytes and Performance - Agile Data Warehousing with Snowflake  (podcast)
• David Bernstein on Creating Implementations of Intent and What Makes Great Developers Great (Podcast)
• Doc Norton Sez You’re Using “Technical Debt” Wrong (Podcast - One of our most popular podcasts with thousands of views!)
• Agile Toolkit - This resource is actually many resources put together for any member of a Scrum team, not just a developer.
• Lambda The Extreme: Test-Driving a Functional Language (Slides)
• We also have an entire category of blogs dedicated to development. Some of it's far out, others are more accessible.

Foundational Materials

• Agile Manifesto – This is where it all begins – the basic tenets of Agile.
• Agile Principles – The expanded list of Agile principles.
• Scrum Guide – The Scrum Guide is the definitive “manual” for Scrum, continuously updated.
• Agile Glossary – Sometimes, the terminology associated with Agile can be confusing. Look here for a concise definition of just about every major term you’ll hear.
• extremeprogramming.org - Introduction to XP values and rules.

Understanding Roles

• Agile Product Owner in a Nutshell video by Henrik Kniberg.
• ScrumMaster by Mike Cohn – An overview of the Scrum Master Role.
• The Development Team section in Scrum Guide.

Recommended Reading

• Team Formation Tuckman model by Mind Tools.
• Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn.
• Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck.
• The Art of Agile Development by James Shore (online chapters here).
• Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck.
• Pair Programming Illuminated by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler.
• Advanced Unit Testing, Part I - Overview by Marc Clifton.
• Continuous Integration by Martin Fowler.
• Refactoring: Code Smells testingeducation.org.
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler.
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers.
• Agile Software Development by Robert Martin (aka Uncle Bob).
• Clean Code by Robert Martin.
• Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn.
• Quick Intro to Agile’s Technical Practices by Abby Fichtner.

Level Up

Managing the work

• Patterns for Splitting User Stories (including PDFs of a story-splitting flowchart and cheat sheet of examples) by Richard Lawrence.
• Splitting User Stories: The Hamburger Method by Gojko Adzic.
• The Card Wall by Paulo Caroli.
• Story Mapping – a quick video demonstration by Lachlan Heasman.
• Mocks Aren't Stubs by Martin Fowler.
• Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky.
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers.
• Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern by Martin Fowler.
• Examining the Agile Cost of Change Curve by Scott W. Ambler.

Avoiding Dysfunction

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
• 5 Ways to Fix Your Dysfunctional Team by Kevin Kruse.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLPIU60_NCM Daily Standup from Hell, funny.

Raising the Technical Game – Great Sites to Visit Often

• cleancoders.com - Great site from Uncle Bob, lots of videos on development, $6 to download.
• martinfowler.com - Martin Fowler’s blog, as Thoughtworks employee.
• facebook.com/kentlbeck - Login to Facebook to see Kent Beck’s writings as a Facebook employee.
• codekata.com - Examples exercises for learning and practice (30-60 min).

Let us Practice! Getting Management to let the Team be Agile

• https://www.infoq.com/articles/benefit-agile-engineering This is an article that an interested non-technical business person/manager could read in 10 minutes to understand why we do what we do.
• Strengthening the Case for Pair-Programming by Williams, Kessler, Cunningham, and Jeffries.
• coderetreat.org Day-long exercise in TDD, pairing, CI, simple design. Great for new teams.

Case Studies

• “Scaling Agile Across the Enterprise (Microsoft Visual Studio case study).
• “Large Scale Agile Transformation in an On-Demand World (Salesforce.com case study) by Chris Fry and Steve Green.
• “Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters and Guilds by Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson.
• Spotify Engineering Culture – Part 1, a video by Henrik Kniberg.
• Spotify Engineering Culture – Part 2, a video by Henrik Kniberg.